Introducing the Ki Desktop Wallet
🔥 Hurray! Our first Mainnet kichain-1 is finally here! To accompany this launch, we are glad to publish a set of tools that will help the KiChain users complete their blockchain operations in friendly and easy to use environments. In this post, we proudly announce the first release of the Ki Desktop Wallet.
The Ki Desktop Wallet is a cross OS desktop application that allows its user to perform a multitude of tasks ranging from managing wallets of various types, to performing transfer and staking transactions in an easy and secure manner.
💾 To download the latest release head to our release page and download the wallet for windows, macOS or Debian systems.
Functionalities
The current version of the desktop wallet is v0.3.1. For this version you will be able to perform the following tasks:
- Importing and creating wallets: wallets can be created locally or imported by their mnemonic. When importing a wallet, you have the choice to import it as an online wallet or as a watch only wallet. In the later case you will only be able to check balances and transactions without being able to send transaction. This is a practical manner of watching, for instance, a cold wallet without the need to import your private key. Moreover, you can import multi-signature wallets by their address and multi-signature data. The imported wallets can be grouped in customizable categories.
- Issuing transactions: a vast majority of cosmos transaction types is supported by the Ki Desktop Wallet. This includes transfer transactions, staking transactions i.e., transactions to delegate, undelegate and redelegate tokens as well as distribution transactions i.e., rewards and/or commissions withdrawal transactions.
- Viewing transactions via the integrated mini-explorer: in order to make it easy to track the transactions of each wallet, the Ki Desktop Wallet integrates a mini explorer that allows to view sent and received transactions as well all delegation transactions. A full view of the blockchain transactions can be easily accessed in the Ki Explorer though the mini-explorer hyperlinks.
- Perform the multi-signature workflow: as mentioned earlier, beside basic wallets, the more advanced multi-signature wallets can also be imported to the Ki Desktop Wallet. The latter also allows to generate, multi-sign and broadcast multi-signature transactions.
This release of the Ki Desktop Wallet, and all future releases, are open sourced and published in a dedicated Ki Foundation Github repository and release page.
Note: For the version v0.3.1 the Ki Desktop Wallet is limited to Mainnet usage only. For security concerns, the usage of the Ki Web Wallet — to which many of our faithful testnet users are accustomed — will be restricted to the testnet operations.
Getting started
Now that we detailed the supported functionalities, let's have a first glance at the usage of the Ki Desktop Wallet through a quick How-to guide. To Keep it simple, we'll consider basic Ki wallet types and common transaction types such as transferring tokens. In our next posts, we will tackle more specific type of wallets which is multi-signature addresses as well as staking related operations.
Create or import a wallet
To create a wallet click on create a wallet from the home screen (or from the top bar if you already created or imported a first wallet), pick a name for the wallet, enter your mnemonic and proceed to the verification step. Once you passed the verification step, enter a password of your choice to protect the wallet and click on “save”. Your wallet will be imported to the wallet list and you can navigate into it by simply clicking on its card. To view your wallet details and balances, you can simple click on the wallet avatar found in the left side of the top bar.
Importing a wallet starts by clicking on Import a wallet and works in the exact same way as creating a new wallet with one exception. Indeed, no mnemonic will be generated or verified as you will have to enter the mnemonic of the wallet you are importing.
Transfer transactions
Now that you imported your wallet, let's transfer some tokens. From the wallet view, click on the transfer icon on the right side of the top bar. The transfer form will open. Fill in the recipient address and the amount of tokens you want to transfer to them. You can also add and optional memo to specify a reference number or a personalised message. Finally enter your password to decrypt your private key, sign the transaction and broadcast it when the transfer button is clicked.
The transaction will appear in the mini explorer as shown below. If it doesn't click on the refresh button on the right of the top bar.
Staking transactions
Staking is a core functionality of the KiChain. XKI holders can bond their tokens to vote for one or more validators and improve their power in the validation process. In return, holders are rewarded a part of the inflation and fee tokens acquired by these validators through the validation process.
Staking tokens in the Ki Desktop wallet is as easy as heading to the Delegation tab in the wallet view, picking the validator to whom you want to delegate your tokens from the list, and clicking on delegate.
In the delegation form simply fill the amount of tokens that you want to stake to the chosen validator and enter your wallet password before clicking on delegate.
To undelegate or redelegate your tokens, follow the same process while choosing the correspondant function (Undelegate or Redelegate) in the validator list. A more detailed guide on staking in the Ki Desktop Wallet will be published very soon.
This Ki Desktop Wallet release is our first step into delivering the best desktop wallet experience tailored to the KiChain users and the KiChain functionalities. Many interface and feature improvements are in the pipe and will be released in the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, feel free to join the Ki Ecosystem Slack and to share your feedback and wish list with us.
